“The French have tanks with one speed forward and five speeds in reverse”.

That is because once they have run over ennemy soldiers, the French looove doing it again. At least five times

Actually, it’s Egyptian tanks that have the backwards gearbox.

Yes if you make the research in english, but in french you have the context why he said that “1ères Assises de l’enseignement de la langue et de la culture arabes, ouvertes à l’Assemblée nationale française”

but you’re right times are changing, 3 decades ago, no president would have said that but that imigrants have to learn french

an accurate comment of a blog that treat the subject :

“c’est marrant, les immigrés italiens et polonais d’il y a 80ans, c’était plutôt « apprenez le français et fermez vos gueules»

“it’s funny, the italian and polish immigrates 80 years ago, it was rather “learn french and STFU”

Now about the arab language, in a few high schools you can learn arab,
each university that has a reputation has an arab degree

It’s a bit to fulfill the requests of the 2nd and 3rd generation of our Maghrebins, but also for the French that want to get an “import-export” situation, for arab countries represent a big open businesses aera.

Though, it never was ment for us, as french citizen, to learn arab.

Whether or not it was flattery, that’s the kind of stuff that no Westerner concerned about their civilization’s survival should ever say, since it gives backing to those bedouins’ fictitious self-image of superiority; just as surrender speeches like Obama’s at al-Azhar “University”, as Wafa Sultan brilliantly put it, was not only full of fallacies and lies; but it was certainly something that has confirmed, in the Arabs’ opinion, their insane and baseless conspiracy theories concocted to explain away the failures of their own societies, for which islam is mostly (if not solely) to blame.

Emmanuel Navon’s point shows yet another example of the little man’s schizophrenia or plain moral confusion.